Monochrome Rainbow
by Kupo Stiltzkin
Summary: Tifa, after meteor. On Cloud, the children and Aerith. Life at the City of Edge isn’t exactly anyone’s other end of the rainbow. [Advent Children][Spoilers]


Disclaimer: Final Fantasy 7 – Advent Children 1997/2005 © SquareEnix

A/N: Credit goes to adventchildren(dot)net for the translation of '_On the Way to a Smile'. _No beta reader on this one, so feedback is greatly appreciated.

**Monochrome Rainbow**

"I will put this on as a reminder," Cloud said one day, "For those that we've lost and could never be forgotten."

His fingers clasped around a thin, red ribbon that he was raising mid-air for everyone to see, and for a second, Tifa thought she saw his eyes water. Then she recognized the color of mako inducement against his eyes, and fidgeted her fists behind her back – a habit she has failed to drop.

All around, they murmured their agreement. Vincent's has been an almost invisible bat of his eyelash, and Marlene, with her arms around Barret's neck, stole anxious glances on everyone, before settling back to her papa's chest.

Later on, when everyone has excused themselves, the little girl trudged to Tifa coyly, paying her shoe strings a bit more attention than she usually did. "Tifa?" She asked in the most childlike voice she could muster.

The woman didn't look up from her dirty dishes, and continued scrubbing on a blackened pan. Cid had insisted on a barbeque after their comeback, even when Midgar was almost down to ashes. The pilot never missed a moment to rejoice, and when everything's finally in order, their old Highwind crew had left the leftovers of a celebration to the bartender. "What is it?"

"Do you have a big red ribbon?"

Such pleasures were rare when Tifa was but a fist-fighter/bartender in the slums of Sector 7, but Marlene gave her such a hopeful look that she'd hate to shatter.

Tifa cut off the end of her hair when Marlene tried growing her hair long. Though clumsily, the young girl learned to tie her hair and braid them, and eventually fixed the wide red ribbon on top of her pony tail.

Just like _she_ used to.

-

The phone was installed two months after they moved in. In which she'd answer 'Strife Delivery Service' in a business-like tone, like the pitch she's used for the patrons at Seventh Heaven.

However, the person she's waiting to call back the most has never called back.

She was hesitating over it one day, after she hung up the device when the caller-id was flashing the number of Cloud's cell. Unbelieving her own eyes, she reached over warily to pick it up and almost prompted on using her professional tone on him.

"Cloud," She started softly. "It's rare for you to call up. Is something wrong?"

She half expected him to greet her or get straight to business, but nothing came from the other line.

"Cloud?"

"... No, I'm not."

For a short terrible moment, Tifa's mind was invaded with bad premonitions – has the man finally give in to the boy in him and asked her what to do in a hitched breath?

It was when the boy answered in a shaken tone that she felt a criminal relief washed over.

-

Cloud brought back a child with mako induced eyes in his arms later that night. He never said anything of the boy, and after she made Marlene watched over Denzel drinking his soup, she saw the man packing things worth a month's supply onto Fenrir again.

"Leaving so soon?"

He didn't turn back. "I got a new job."

"Why don't you," She whispered, careful, "stay over for the night and leave early tomorrow? That boy seemed to have grown attached to you and Marlene missed you."

She didn't, however, added _and I also missed you_.

But she knew her unspoken words reached him eventually, when Cloud silently turned back and walked into the house after packing the last of his stuffs.

Outside, the lights to other houses began to come on, and the faint scent of dinner was everywhere.

-

Marlene's eyes have been lurching around Tifa and Cloud for an annoying period amount of time at dinner. "Cloud?"

It was Cloud's turn to raise his eyebrow at Barret's daughter, funny in the way that she used to be terribly shy to him. Now, Marlene was staring at him straight in the eyes without apparent hesitation. "Why aren't you together with Tifa?"

Tifa choked on her orange juice, and Denzel reached over to pat her back. Cloud was much more indifferent, and he scanned the girl in a quiet, would be-SOLDIER stare. "Who asked you to say that?"

"Johnny from the main road," Marlene declared, and fiddled with her carrot. "He said that for a man and a woman to live together properly, they need to get married."

"Marlene!"

"It's all right, Tifa," Cloud answered, turning back to the little girl. "Who else said this?"

At this, Marlene simply ducked her head, hiding her eyes via the bangs she's grown over the years. "Papa," she murmured, "said that...'Tifa and Cloud should jes' get it over with. Aerith would have wanted that'."

Silence suffocated them at once, and Denzel studied each of the collective faces uneasily, and eventually tried to finish his dinner.

-

She found him outside the house, face turned to a freshly made fire in the inside of the barrel, legs crossed on the pavement.

"You can't see the stars here," She heard him utter, his shoulders rigid and his back to her.

"Just like the slums."

"Why did you stay?"

Clutching the blanket tighter to her chest, Tifa walked over and spread it over his shoulders. "I could ask you the same thing."

He didn't answer, nor did he try to shrug off the blanket.

"For the children," She replied finally, holding his shoulders in her gentlest grip, as if trying to stop him from escaping. "For you. Is it too much?"

Tifa sighed, crouching down to press her forehead against the small of his back. In front of them, the fire crackled against the night wind loudly.

"...You deserve better." _Man. Town. Future._

She thought of crying at first. Ironically, the tears wouldn't come out. Instead, she tried reaching over his arms. Just when her fingers clasped around his left bicep, Cloud immediately shook them off.

He stood up abruptly and left, Fenrir's engine roaring in the night.

-

Life in Edge was like Geostigma, like the tang of steel and iron biting under the skin. It felt like hell at summer, but at winter, people compensated their loss over Lifestream with measly chopped firewood.

The sky was always white bordering on grey. Even at dusk, it became so dark ultimately; and most former Midgar citizens, slums or not, have scurried away into their homes long before sunset.

Cloud finally removed the SOLDIER uniform when they started constructing the city, and donned on the black fabric. The color crashed greatly with his eyes and hair, and later he'd put on the blasted shades. Tifa knew his silent mourning could only be meant for one person, and she agreed to this quietly when she zipped up her black leather vest. Edge's weather was never warm enough to spend basking in sunlight all day or cool enough to spend all say dozing, but it has the humidity of Costa del Sol even when it didn't rain, as Tifa didn't remove her trusted white shirt and replaced her old gloves with black leather.

Everywhere she went it was monochrome, even as her face upturned to the late night sky. The flicker of the stars has grown old since then, and she couldn't find the same heavens as Nibelheim anywhere.

Indeed, she only saw a monochrome rainbow, almost indistinguishable in the smoke filled sky of the newborn city.

-

"What's it like?"

This question has rolled off Yuffie's mouth on her latest visit. So-called materia hunter insisted on seeing her long prized possessions, but Tifa poured her a cup of tea instead, offering the younger girl a quick lunch before heading back to Wutai.

"What do you mean?"

The girl's head was on the bar, and she rolled her neck slightly, eyeing the wall behind Tifa with squinted eyes, crayon based scribbles plastered on the steel walls with cello tapes, sketches in pastel. "Married to the kids."

Tifa let out a small chuckle, and continued wiping the glasses dry.

"Or to Cloud," Yuffie mused teasingly, her arms folded behind her head as she leaned back on the bar's stool. "Now that's something I _gotta_ know."

They wore no wedding rings and exchanged no wedding vows, yet they shared the same roof and raised children as if their own. She agreed to the Delivery Service unwittingly, him feeding the hungry mouths at home from the measly few gils he called payment and her tending to her regulars and their children, like man-wife do. Sometimes, Tifa felt like bursting and getting the hell out, if not for fear of not seeing anyone ever again.

And the fact that he wouldn't have anything to come back to if she ever walked out of Seventh Heaven.

"It is our home," Tifa answered, more to herself than to the younger girl. "Here."

Yuffie snorted, and began the tale of her multiple siblings and god-awful father in a sing-song voice, swearing that they have robbed anything worthy from her childhood. That afternoon though, the ninja excused herself before she finally went back, claiming that her family must have missed her.

That night, Tifa left the voice message to Cloud, saying _come back whenever you feel like, because this is your home._

She woke up the next day with breakfast ready on the table, and the children pulling Cloud out to play.

-

She had seen a glimpse of what seemed to be the hem of a pink dress and braid of brown hair there.

His eyes was entranced at the church's entrance for quite sometime, and Tifa knew before long he'd jumped out of his trance, out of the water and asked where was his bike. She wanted to stop him from drifting there, telling him that everything was all right and over with, _she was with us all this time_. Tifa Lockhart hated going against her own words, even though Cloud betrayed his.

_Let's go meet her._

But Cloud came back when the sunset fell; painting the steel-grey town with lush, brilliant colors, and before she knew it, placed a bouquet of lilies in her hands.

"I went there and found this," He said simply. _Her_.

They were bright, like the flowers _she_ used to tend at the Church in the slums, like the sun, like the Promised Land, like his hair. Like his arms around her before he walked in.

The rain hasn't stopped. Yet, at the other rim of town was the first multi colored rainbow she's ever seen.

**END**


End file.
